Enterprise

Microsoft Is Sick Of PowerPoint, Too

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Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella during a forum at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Sept. 25.  REUTERS/China Daily

We can't even remember the last time we saw someone under 30 fire up a PowerPoint instead of a Prezi when giving a talk.

Microsoft hopes to put the kibosh on that with Microsoft Sway, its new presentation app.

Sway lets you drag and drop photos, videos, files from your computer, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or cloud storage. It works via a web browser or an app for your phone, and the presentation is stored on the web.

Microsoft announced Sway in October and on Monday offered an update, giving preview invites to various journalists, including us.

We played around a little with Sway and can confirm that it is remarkably easy to use.

It has some nice features like "change my mood," which lets you choose a new layout, background, and fonts. The "remix" button does that for you (a little like the "I feel lucky" button on Google).

Microsoft Sway
Microsoft Sway is easy to use.  Business Insider/Julie Bort

We didn't see anything in the demo that made us say, "Wow! No one's ever done that before!"

But first things first. Prezi says more than 50 million people use it, including 80% of the Fortune 500. That's an awful lot of people who have had their heads turned from PowerPoint.

Microsoft needs an easy-to-use alternative to Prezi, and Sway fits that bill.

Here's a partial demo from Microsoft's video. Notice this Microsoft ad shows the guy using Sway on an iPad.

Microsoft Sway
Microsoft Sway YouTube ad featuring an Apple iPad.  YouTube/Microsoft Office

But perhaps the most impressive thing about Sway is that it's part of an bunch of new apps developed under CEO Satya Nadella's new mission: to "reinvent productivity."

Sway joins ...

Skype Translator, a service launched earlier this month that will translate a Skype conversation between two languages in real time.

Delve, an Office 365 tool that rolled out in September that is supposed to find all the important stuff buried in your documents, calendars, and contacts.

Power Q&A, an add-on cloud service for Office 365 customers.

And Cortana, Microsoft's answer to Siri, available in the current version of Windows Phone and, sources say, later as a desktop app in Windows 10.

And here's an example of a Sway presentation.

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Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.